Oh those 16 words & how liberal media is getting caught in their own lies & deceit.....
<font size=4>BBC blunder
British network went over the top with faulty reports to paint Blair, Bush as liars<font size=3>
Jul. 26, 2003 12:00 AM
There is still dispute over whether the Iraqi nuclear-weapons intelligence scandal will continue dogging the Bush administration.
But it is playing havoc across the Atlantic at the BBC.
The British Broadcasting Corp., Britain's oldest and most prestigious news network, now admits that it "sexed up" - which is to say, overhyped - confidential information its reporters obtained regarding British intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
The result of the BBC's skewed reporting was that British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his government and, by extension, President Bush, all were made to look like liars. Their pre-war characterizations of Saddam's nuclear menace were overblown, according to countless BBC reports in recent weeks, reports we now know to be grossly overblown themselves.
The current scandal came to light following the suicide of the Blair administration's weapons expert, David Kelly, who served as the BBC's secret source. Before his death, Kelly decried the BBC reporting about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
And as word leaked out that Kelly was the news network's secret source, BBC reporters began taking it on the chin for having repeatedly described their source, a Blair administration official, as "an intelligence service source" or as "a member of the security services." The scandal now is that the BBC lied.
As a result, some predict the BBC may ultimately lose its public-financing license. It certainly has lost credibility, which is the stock in trade for a news agency.
But, more important to Bush's war opponents on this side of the pond, the BBC-Kelly scandal has thrown a wet towel on the always ludicrous claim that Bush and Blair intentionally deceived the public about the extent of imminent danger posed by Saddam's nuclear program.
The problem for the BBC is that the Kelly revelations confirm what many viewers and listeners of its radio and TV reports on Iraq implicitly suspected: that the BBC was utterly over the top in its hostility to the war and to those leaders who prosecuted it. And the BBC's problem has become the problem of Bush's once-buoyant critics, who have hyped so relentlessly those nefarious 16 words Bush spoke in his State of the Union address about Saddam's nuclear program.
Even former President Clinton has sucked wind from their sails. On CNN's Larry King Live program, Clinton noted that "everybody makes mistakes while they are president" and called "incontestable" the fact that Saddam had unaccounted-for biological and nuclear weapons while he was in office.
As if it even needs noting, without the Iraq war, the Hussein brothers would today be helping to run their nation. That their reign of terror is at an end is even more incontestable than their father's pre-war stockpile of weapons.
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